Tuesday 15 / July / 2025
Muscat: Making the use of child car seats a legal requirement in the Sultanate will be a major goal of the Oman Road Safety Association (ORSA) in 2017, its CEO Ali Al Barwani said.
“OSRA will make every effort in 2017 to ensure child car seats are mandatory in cars on Omani roads,” said Al Barwani.
Also read: Saturday deadliest for car accidents in Oman
He promised that ORSA will continue its road safety campaigns to create awareness in society, with its new vision, entitled‘Conscious Society, Safe Roads’.
Biggest threat
“Despite the improvements made over the past years, car accidents remain the biggest threat to our society, to our youth and our children,” he explained.
Recent figures from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) stated that 3,793 road accidents were reported, as of November 2016.
The NCSI recorded 616 fatalities as of the end of November.
Also read: 166 animals killed on Oman roads in 2015
“That’s almost two people dying every day in roads accidents. Worst of all, we know these accidents could have been avoided,” Al Barwani noted.
“With that in mind, ORSA decided to rework its strategy to focus on the right issues,” he added.
Cross road safely
“We might have taught our children to cross the road safely and our youth to drive without using a mobile phone, but we also want to be ready for the challenges our children and our grandchildren will face,” he explained.
Al Barwani declared that in 2017, ORSA would “widely work” with school students, youth, families, the community and businesses. “We will encourage all to share knowledge that can save lives,” he said. Six years ago, three boys were speeding at 190km/h when the driver of the car lost control and crashed into a mountain.
Two of the boys miraculously escaped the near-fatal accident, but the third in the group never walked again.
Uthman Al Kithairi was only 21 when the fatal accident in Yanqul took away the use of his legs. The young Omani man suffered a broken back and a spinal cord injury.
“My body was bent over the vehicle’s metal. We were not wearing seat belts,” he recalled, adding that seat belts would possibly have saved him from becoming disabled. Citing his example, Kithairi called upon motorists to be cautious. “Even if you are following the traffic laws, some irresponsible driver could kill you,” he warned motorists. He said it still hurts him when he meets the family of his friend who was driving the car at the time of the accident.
“I can see the regret in their eyes for a mistake they did not make. They feel responsible for their son’s mistake,” Kithairi said.
“We used to speed and drive carelessly, but nowadays drivers are distracted by mobile phones and social media apps, like Snapchat and Whatsapp, which are as dangerous as speeding,” he said.
The young man, however, is coping well with his disability.
Kithairi works at the Rochester Wellness Rehabilitation Center and funds his management studies at the Arab Open University.
